Products are selected by our editors, we may earn commission from links on this page.
Consumer Reports set out to find which shower staples are actually safe for skin and water systems. Working with the nonprofit certifiers Made Safe and Made Wise, the group combed the ingredient lists of more than 100 body washes sold in the US. Only a small slice came back clean. The rest carried ingredients tied to everything from skin irritation to long-term environmental buildup, and some of the biggest names on store shelves didn’t make the cut.
Just 27 of Over 100 Body Washes Earned Consumer Reports’ Top Rating
The review sorted every product into three tiers: Top Choices, Good Choices, and Worse Choices. Brands like Dr. Bronner’s, Bathing Culture, and Kosmatology landed in the top group, carrying no flagged ingredients. But the majority of body washes tested posed potential or outright health and environmental risks, meaning the odds of grabbing a problem bottle off a drugstore shelf were higher than grabbing a safe one.
Aveeno, Old Spice, and Irish Spring Landed on the Worst List
Some familiar names ended up flagged with known risks rather than merely possible ones. Reviewers placed Aveeno Skin Relief, Old Spice Men’s Swagger, Irish Spring Original, Nivea Refreshing, and St. Ives Soothing among products carrying confirmed hazard concerns. Store brands from Walmart, Target, and Walgreens turned up on the same list, showing the issue wasn’t limited to any one price point or retailer.
A Hidden Word on the Label Can Signal Dozens of Undisclosed Chemicals
The word “fragrance” is doing a lot of unseen work. Federal law treats fragrance formulas as trade secrets, so companies can list a single word instead of the actual compounds inside. According to Summer Streets, a research scientist with the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency, that gap means shoppers have no way to know if a formula includes chemicals linked to allergies, hormone interference, or long-term buildup in the body.
A Manufacturing Byproduct Tied to Cancer Risk Is Hiding in Everyday Suds
Some surfactants are made through a process called ethoxylation, which can leave behind a byproduct called 1,4-dioxane. It isn’t intentionally added and won’t appear on any label, yet animal studies have linked it to multiple cancers, and regulators classify it as a probable carcinogen. Contamination found in New York groundwater was serious enough that the state moved to cap the chemical in household products.
Streets Says Treatment Plants Were “Never Designed” for These Chemicals
Wastewater treatment plants handle solid waste well, but many of today’s personal care chemicals never crossed the minds of the engineers who built them. Streets put it directly: the plants were “never designed to remove these types of chemicals, period. And they still aren’t.” Retrofitting facilities to catch compounds like 1,4-dioxane would cost enormous sums, so most of it passes straight through untouched.
An Estimated 7 Million Tons of Surfactants Enter Waterways Every Year
Surfactants work by grabbing dirt with one end of their molecule and water with the other, and that same structure makes them stubbornly hard to filter out at treatment plants. Researchers estimate roughly 7 million tons escape into aquatic environments worldwide annually. Any single bottle falls under a safety threshold, but multiplied across billions of daily users, the buildup adds up fast for fish, plants, and microorganisms downstream.
P&G Blamed a “Glitch” After Reviewers Found Gaps in Its Disclosures
When asked about flagged ingredients in Native, Ivory, and Old Spice body washes, Procter & Gamble pointed to its SmartLabel disclosure platform. Reviewers found the Native listings riddled with errors. P&G’s response: “We have discovered a glitch where our ingredient data is not flowing correctly into SmartLabel.” The company pulled Native’s pages from the platform entirely, and updated fragrance details still weren’t posted anywhere else by publication.
Four Label Terms Separate Safer Body Washes From the Rest
Made Safe and Made Wise point to specific red flags shoppers can actually spot. Skip anything listing “fragrance” without further detail, and watch for ingredient names ending in “-eth,” along with PEG or polysorbate followed by a number, since those often signal ethoxylated compounds carrying 1,4-dioxane. Artificial dyes labeled FD&C add zero cleaning power. Formulas marketed as 100 percent biodegradable with third-party certification scored consistently better.
The Safer Pick Is Already on the Shelf, Just Not the One Getting Advertised
The review makes one thing clear: cost and brand recognition don’t predict safety. Some of the priciest bottles landed on the worst list, while modest, certified options like Dr. Bronner’s ranked among the cleanest. Reading past the marketing, checking for biodegradable claims and third-party certification, and skipping vague fragrance listings gives shoppers a real way to choose better without waiting on regulators or companies to catch up.